The Easiest (and Smallest) Chicken Parm

Hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with easy chicken parm for one. That's right we've miniaturized our very popular chicken parm casserole which uses a very fast and easy no fry method and we get the same amazing results as traditional chicken parm without having to do any of the work. And to get started we're going to prep some kind of small casserole or baking dish by drizzling in a few teaspoons of olive oil followed by a nice pinch of red pepper flakes. And once that's set we will take a boneless skinless chicken breast and we'll place that in smooth side down and we will generously season the top with some salt as well as a nice pinch of freshly ground black pepper. And as you can probably see this one did not come with a tenderloin attached but if your chicken breast did come with that it's going to work exactly the same except it might just take a little longer to cook. And once we have that side seasoned we'll go ahead and flip it over and do the exact same thing to the other side. And this was a fairly large breast that was just over eight ounces which means we are going to need a certain amount of salt to season it properly but depending on how salty your croutons are you may need to adjust that slightly. But anyway once that's been salt and peppered we will grab some marinara sauce and we will spoon a generous portion over the top and ideally that's homemade using one of our recipes of course but if there was ever a recipe where you could get away using a prepared jar from the store this would be the recipe. Plus we're making this for one so there's not going to be anyone around to judge us. And once that has been soft we will top that with half of our cheese and we'll be using two kinds. Some mozzarella of course and we definitely want to try to use the low moisture variety and not that soft wet sticky fresh stuff. And once that's been applied we'll also sprinkle over half our freshly grated parmesan and of course we're using the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano. And once our sauce has been cheesed we will grab the key to the whole operation some crispy croutons. And whether those are homemade or store-bought I do like to break about half of them up so that we get a nice diverse array of sizes. Okay if you're using those small square ones you can just put them on as is since those are probably too hard to break up. But since these were kind of flat and relatively large I did break up about half of them and put the rest on whole. And as you will hopefully see feel and taste those croutons are going to simulate the crunchy coating on a properly cooked chicken parm except maybe even better. And I'm going to talk more about that later but once our crouton is on we will go ahead and top this with the rest of our cheese fried mozzarella first followed by the parmesan. And of course if you want to use some other Italian cheeses like provolone or pecorino go ahead. I mean you are after all this Chef John of making chicken parm just for one. But no matter what you use once that's been scattered over this is ready to place into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes or until our chicken's cooked through. And it hopefully looks like this. Oh yeah now that looks enticing and it looks done but let's not guess. Let's go ahead and grab a thermometer and we'll make sure we've reached which for me is going to be somewhere between 145 and 150. And I'm going to go ahead and use a nice freeze frame here so you can see that was just about perfect. And that's it we'll let this rest for about five minutes before we serve it. During which time if we want we can garnish the top with some freshly chopped Italian parsley. And that's it I'm going to pick that up and transfer it onto a towel so it doesn't slide all over when I go in for the official taste. And now my friends if everything goes according to plan should taste exactly like a classic chicken parmesan and above and beyond the flavor we should be enjoying all the same textures as well. Except with classic chicken parm even if you manage to fry it and cook it perfectly once the sauce and cheese gets involved you do lose a lot of that crispy texture. Whereas with this method our croutons mostly stay nice and crunchy. So besides being way easier and way faster and not requiring any messy dredging or pan frying I think this method might actually give us a better texture since we should be enjoying crispy crunchy goodness in almost every bite. And by the way in the original chicken parm casserole recipe I actually had you brown the chicken breast first in a pan which I did not do here to save you a step. And I was curious how big of a difference that was going to make but as it turns out I could not tell the difference. So basically we made that very easy recipe even easier and usually there's some sacrifices and compromises involved when we're using one of these time-saving recipe hacks. But here that is certainly not the case which is why I really do hope you give it a try soon. So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy!